This empirical paper, titled “Who is healthier? A meta-analysis of the relations between the HEXACO personality domains and health outcomes,” authored by Jan Luca Pletzer, Isabel Thielmann, and Ingo Zettler, addresses a long-standing interest among researchers and practitioners in the connections between fundamental personality domains and various health outcomes. While prior meta-analyses predominantly concentrated on the Big Five traits (Openness to Experience/Intellect, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), this study presents the first meta-analysis to examine the relationships between the HEXACO domains and health.
The research is motivated by advancements in personality psychology that have put forward the HEXACO personality model as a six-dimensional representation of basic personality, challenging the comprehensiveness of the Big Five. The HEXACO model includes Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness versus Anger, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, with notable conceptual differences from the Big Five, particularly in the unique Honesty-Humility domain and distinctions within Emotionality and Agreeableness. The study argues that focusing solely on the Big Five might impede a comprehensive understanding of how basic personality relates to health.
To address this gap, the authors conducted a large-scale meta-analysis (k = 276 studies, N = 92,319 participants) focusing on three primary health categories: mental health, health behavior, and physical health. They also investigated relations with more specific health criteria within these categories. A key aspect of the methodology involved using the HEXACO Personality Inventories for personality assessment and correcting effect sizes for unreliability.
Key findings of the meta-analysis include:
- Strongest relations with mental health: Generally, the HEXACO domains showed the strongest associations with mental health outcomes, followed by health behavior, while relations with physical health were weak and largely non-significant. This pattern largely aligns with previous findings for the Big Five.
- Universal links to mental health and health behavior: All HEXACO domains were significantly linked to both mental health and health behavior outcomes.
- Extraversion as a predictor: Extraversion demonstrated the strongest correlation with mental health (ρ = .48).
- Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness for health behavior: Honesty-Humility (ρ = .31) and Conscientiousness (ρ = .31) were the most predictive domains for health behavior.
- Limited links to physical health: Physical health was only significantly associated with Emotionality (ρ = .14, negative correlation) and Conscientiousness (ρ = .10, positive correlation).
- Incremental validity of Honesty-Humility: Honesty-Humility demonstrated incremental variance over the Big Five in several health behavior outcomes (e.g., aggression, gambling), but it showed little incremental validity for mental and physical health outcomes.
- Outcome-dependent model choice: When comparing the explanatory variance of the HEXACO and Big Five models, the study concluded that each personality model occasionally exhibited superior criterion-related validity, suggesting that the choice of the more useful personality model could be dependent on the specific health outcome being predicted. The Big Five model more often showed higher criterion-related validity for specific health outcomes.
This comprehensive meta-analysis significantly extends the understanding of how basic personality domains, particularly within the HEXACO framework, relate to a broad spectrum of health indicators, moving beyond the predominant focus on the Big Five in previous health research.
Reference: Pletzer, J. L., Thielmann, I., & Zettler, I. (2024). Who is healthier? A meta-analysis of the relations between the HEXACO personality domains and health outcomes. European Journal of Personality, 38(2), 342–364.
Note: Research Questions: Based on the detailed introduction to the meta-analysis, the research questions that the authors deemed worthy of investigation can be articulated as follows:
- What are the relationships between the HEXACO personality domains (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness versus Anger, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience), as assessed by HEXACO Personality Inventories, and various health outcomes? This central question aimed to fill a gap in the literature, as prior meta-analyses had predominantly focused on the Big Five traits.
- How do the HEXACO domains relate to three broad health categories: mental health, health behavior, and physical health? The study specifically set out to examine these primary categories.
- What are the relationships between the HEXACO domains and more specific health criteria within these broad categories? This involved a detailed analysis of outcomes such as life satisfaction, physical strength, and substance use.
- How does the criterion-related validity of the HEXACO domains for specific health outcomes compare with the validity of the Big Five domains? The researchers aimed to assess if considering the HEXACO model, with its conceptual differences, would provide a more comprehensive understanding of personality-health links.
- Does Honesty-Humility, a unique domain in the HEXACO model, explain incremental variance in health outcomes over and above the Big Five domains? This specific question addressed whether the distinctive Honesty-Humility trait adds predictive power for health-related criteria beyond what the Big Five can explain.
By investigating these questions, the study aimed to deepen the understanding of trait-based pathways to health, expand the nomological net of the HEXACO domains, and clarify how structural differences between the HEXACO and Big Five models affect health outcome relations.